"I had not thought of doing so," Count Roumovski returned tranquilly. "You and your views and your destiny do not interest me, I must own, except in so far as they interfere with myself and the woman I love. You have proved yourself to be just a warped atom of the great creation, incapable of anything but ignoble narrowness. You cannot even examine your own emotions honestly and probe their meaning or you would realize no man should marry, be he priest or layman, if he looks upon the joys of physical love as base and his succumbing to them a proof of the power of the beast in himself. Because he then lives under continual degradation of soul by acting against his conscience." Mr. Medlicott was now silent, almost choking with perturbation. So Count Roumovski went on: "The wise man faces the facts of nature. Looks straight to find God's meaning in them, and then tries to exalt and ennoble them to their loftiest good. He does not, in his puny impotence, quarrel with the all-powerful Creator and try to stamp out that with which He thought fit to endow human beings." "Your words convey a flagrant denial of original sin, and I cannot listen to such an argument," Mr. Medlicott flashed, his anger now at white heat. "You would do away with a whole principle of the Christian religion." "No; I would only do away with a faulty interpretation which man grafted upon it," Count Roumovski answered. Then the two men glared straight into each other's eyes for a moment, and Eustace Medlicott quailed beneath the magnetic force of the Russian's blue ones--he turned away abruptly. He was too intolerant of character and too disturbed now to permit himself to hear more of these reasonings. He could but resort to protest and let his wrath rise to assist him. "It cannot benefit either Miss Rawson or ourselves to continue this unseemly controversy over her," he said in a raucous voice. "I have told you I will give no freedom upon your request--and I have warned you of my action. Now I shall go," and he took three steps toward the door. But Count Roumovski's next words arrested him a moment; his tone was no longer one of suave, detached calmness, but sharp and decisive, and his bearing was instinct with strength and determination. "Since we are coming to warnings," he said, "we drop the velvet glove. The discourtesy to a lady conveyed in your words obliges me to use my own way without further consulting you for assisting her wishes. I will again thank you for coming up here and will have the honor to wish you goodnight." With which he opened the door politely and bowed his visitor out. And when he was alone Count Roumovski sat down by the open window and puffed his cigar meditatively for some minutes, smiling quietly to himself as he mused: